Posts tagged “Cardboard Children”

Goodbye youse. It's been six long years since Cardboard Children began here on the world's best computer games website, and it's time for the column to come to an end. Yes, I've packed my bags, and I'm standing by the RPS door, ready to leave. My hand is on the doorknob. But before I go, I'd like to point you towards some of my favourite…

The rumours were true. Fantasy Flight Games and Games Workshop are ending their relationship. It's a conscious uncoupling that will send shockwaves through the board gaming community, and no wonder. For a blissful period, the two were a match made in heaven. But now it's over, and everyone is just trying to wrap their heads around what it all means. As for you? You need…

Sometimes you play a board game that you know will just be a joy to write about. Rhino Hero is one of those games. It's not really a board game, of course. It's actually a card game. But it's kinda a dexterity game too. And it's also a kids game, for kids of all ages. If you don't have kids, buy Rhino Hero anyway. If…

Hello youse. On the board game scene, there’s always a great deal of buzz. Indeed, the industry depends on buzz – be it the mindless drone-buzz of pre-release hype or the more alluring summer’s day busy-buzz of post-launch word-of-mouth. Buzz is what makes a game hot, while silence is what makes a game not. Today we take a look at a few upcoming games that…

Hello youse. A man called Robert Florence gets on a train to London at 2pm, leaving from Glasgow. If the train is travelling at 80 miles per hour, and the distance to London is 860 miles, how clear is it that Robert doesn’t know how far it is to London? But what I really want to know is: How tall is Robert when he’s on…

Hello youse. I have no idea what a MOBA is.* I'm not even joking.** I've never played one. I think I dabbled with one of the PC ones for an hour or so once, but that was it. What does MOBA even stand for? I know what MMORPG means, and I know what an FPS is. But a MOBA? About the only thing I know…

Hello youse. It’s safe to say that some of the news I’m about to share with you is the most exciting news that I’ve shared on this site in a long, long time. If you’re deep into board gaming, you’ll probably know most of this news already, but have you heard my incisive analysis? No. If you’re only casually into board games, all this exciting…

Hello youse. As I speak to you now, I am about to crack open Mansions of Madness Second Edition. The original was a game I loved. But it was a difficult game to get to the table. It took a fair bit of time to set up, a lot of maintenance, and so that great, ambitious game didn't get the plays that it deserved. It…

Hello youse. City of Iron, a game by Ryan Laukat, impresses not only with its gameplay – which is deep and intriguing – but with its sense of aesthetic cohesiveness. This is a game designed from the ground-up, brick by brick, until it hangs together as a statement of the designer's artistic intent. The art, by the designer, tells a story of a steampunk world…

There was a time when people who played board games weren't obsessed with things like “balance”. Back in the day, you'd sit and play a board game and no-one would say anything about the “mechanics”. Nobody ever talked about design. There was a time when a board game was a game inside a cardboard box, and if you were lucky it gave you a measure…

Hello youse. Sometimes you like a board game a little, sometimes you like it a lot. The great games stay great forever, giving you a little tremor of excitement every time you think about them. Others fade a bit over time, as you become too familiar with their dynamics and play other games that improve upon what they do. Other games just fade away for…

Hey folks. This week I want to do something special – I want to quickly revisit a few board games I've covered before – because board games often reveal more of themselves over time. The games I cover this week are ones that have grown in my estimation since I first covered them here. Next week I'll be talking about games that have gone down…

Do you like Monopoly? Most of you probably don't. Many of you probably don't even play the game by the correct rules. It's a fact, an actual proven scientific statistical actual factual fact, that most people have played Monopoly by the wrong rules. If you play Monopoly by the rules as written, it's a faster, even more cut-throat game. And it's good. Sure, there are…

Hello youse. It's June! We're smack bang in the middle of the start of the summer, unless you live in Scotland as I do. We're still in winter, and will be until winter starts. But that doesn't mean I'm not full of all the summer joys. I am. I am absolutely rammed to the gills with the joys of summer, so much so that my…

Hello youse. If you're going to call your board game “Sun Tzu”, then you better be damn sure that the game in question makes art out of war. If you're going to call your game “Sun Tzu” then you better make sure that it's going to get your brain ticking. You better make sure that players will sit at the table and feel like they…

The biggest surprise about Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower is how brilliant it is. Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. The last Games Workshop standalone game I played was the lithe Betrayal At Calth, a fantastic run and gun scenario/skirmish game. And yet, as the beauty of this Silver Tower makes itself known, the main thing I feel is surprise. This is a game that has…

Hello youse. Last week I started talking about Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, the new big box board game release from Games Workshop. Actually, it's not a board game. Oh, it is. But it's a strange hybrid thing, where miniatures from further into the GW line can be incorporated into the game, and characters from the board game can be used in the GW miniatures game…

With the release of the new Warhammer Quest from Games Workshop – full name “Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower” - I thought it might be good to do a deeper exploration of what it is to go deep into a new Games Workshop game. Buying something like Warhammer Quest (isn't it exciting that there's a new Warhammer Quest?) is not the same as buying your average…

Hello youse. I've been playing board and card games with my daughter far more regularly these days. She's 9 now, and so she's crossed over into an area where lots of games are suddenly entirely playable, and to a high level of ability. In fact, I'll be honest, she's more often than not hammering me at games. The most recent game she completely dismantled me…

Hello youse. I've covered T.I.M.E. Stories before, and I was very interested in the response to that review in the comments. I've also found the discussion about T.I.M.E. Stories across the internet in general to be, quite honestly, very entertaining. There's never really been a game quite like T.I.M.E. Stories before, and so, almost four months after my initial review, I want to talk about…